


Dry as a Bone

by DoreyG



Category: Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly
Genre: Developing Relationship, Grief/Mourning, Hugs, Job Loss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:34:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28260243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: “Oh. Well, I’ve been better, maestro, been a hell of a lot better to tell truth.” Shaw stared at him for a long moment, and he was stunned to see honest to God grief in his eyes. Even when Shaw had just lost his brother he had been so much more himself than this lost man currently standing before him. “Not that I mean to put anything extra on your shoulders, I’m sure you’ve got enough of your own shit going on at present moment, but it seems like I’ve just lost my job.”
Comments: 8
Kudos: 10
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Dry as a Bone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [egelantier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/egelantier/gifts).



He had expected to be kept in the Cabildo all night, at the very least, so it was a profound surprise when he was dragged out of the cells around mid afternoon and told that he had his liberty. He didn’t hang around to question the matter, rather immediately collected the few possessions that he’d had on his person when he’d been taken and fled before anybody could change their mind.

At first he thought that nobody was outside to greet him, which wasn’t that much of a surprise considering quite how quick his release had been, but then he noticed a familiar rangy presence waiting across the street for him. Abishag Shaw, for once not bound to his desk in the middle of the day but rather out and about and looking like an actual citizen of the town.

“Shaw?” He asked, mildly surprised by this sight, and glanced around with automatic wariness for a long moment before crossing the street and walking up to him. “I suppose I have you to thank for getting me freed so quickly. What strings did you pull this time?”

“Oh, a few,” Shaw answered, a great deal less precise than usual. He looked closer, immediately concerned, and was shocked to find the man looking dazed and pale as if he’d just received some profound shock or been taken by the Cholera between one breath and the next. “Not many, all things considered. How are you feeling after all of that, Maestro?”

“I’ve been worse. I’ve also been better, but that seems a little besides the point at the moment,” he said, still watching Shaw carefully. Usually the show of concern, a little more than Shaw usually allowed himself, would’ve warmed him but in that moment it only added to his profound sense of worry. “What about you?”

Shaw, in the brief moments in between his words, had allowed his gaze to wander to the building behind him. When he cleared his throat, deliberately, he blinked hard and looked back at him only after a considerable delay. “Sorry?”

He was convinced that something was wrong now, knew it to be so in his gut. Somehow the sight of Shaw disorientated like this left him even more concerned than if Hannibal or Rose had exhibited the exact same symptoms. Shaw was usually so very dry, so put together no matter the chaos raging around him. Something truly bad must’ve happened, to leave him as weak as this. “How are _you_ , Shaw?”

“Oh. Well, I’ve been better, maestro, been a hell of a lot better to tell truth.” Shaw stared at him for a long moment, and he was stunned to see honest to God grief in his eyes. Even when Shaw had just lost his brother he had been so much more himself than this lost man currently standing before him. “Not that I mean to put anything extra on your shoulders, I’m sure you’ve got enough of your own shit going on at present moment, but it seems like I’ve just lost my job.”

Shaw could’ve spontaneously turned into an alligator and sung an aria, and he would’ve been a great deal less stunned. He automatically reached out to grab his arm in a show of support, caught his hand only at the last moment as he realized what grabbing a white man in a public space would look like. “You were _fired_?”

Shaw looked down at his hand, stopped less than an inch away from his arm, and then back up at his face. His expression grew a little more focused, and decidedly more sour. “Wasn’t aware that I stuttered, maestro.”

“You didn’t, not at all. It was just…” Shaw had never looked at him in such an unimpressed manner before. That, along with the impact of his words, left him uncertain and fumbling when he should’ve been confident and comforting. “Why on earth would they fire somebody like you? Surely they must know that you’re the best police sergeant they have, and could ever think of to have?”

“Apparently they disagree,” Shaw said, his tone worryingly flat, and took a jerky step back from him. He was moving like a wounded animal, a wolf who had been gored by its prey and was only now realizing quite how bad the damage was. “Seems like they think I’ve looked the other way one too many times, if you know what I mean. That I’ve pulled back from chasing the people I should be chasing a little too often, and put the entire business of justice in danger.”

He blinked, remained close to Shaw but still not touching. You didn’t want to grab at an injured wolf either, even if they were a great deal less dangerous than a perfectly healthy white man. “But… Every policeman in New Orleans does exactly the same thing.”

“Yeah, but most of them have the good sense to do it for their fat cat white friends instead of the people who actually deserve a little bit of justice,” Shaw said, his tone now bitter and ravaged. That old sourness remained on his face, the expression of a man who had lost absolutely everything. “I’ll tell you what happened, maestro, since you’re interested and it directly involves you. I saw that you were all banged up, for no real reason as far as I could see, and intervened on your behalf. My direct superior noticed, as he’s been a lot more inclined to do lately, and stopped by my desk to warn me that I was getting mighty close to certain undesirable people. I, like the stupid fool I am, argued that you were a businessman and downright pillar of this here community and so not actually undesirable at all. My boss, or former boss as I should now be saying, conceded this fine point but was hardly pleased by me arguing so fiercely for somebody who couldn’t give him a little monetary compensation for looking the other way. And so he went and offered me a choice: I could set you free, or I could start acting properly and keep my job as a result.”

“And you chose me,” he said softly, stunned by the lengths that Shaw had gone to for him yet again.

“Yeah, I chose you,” Shaw said softly, his voice deadly. He was still practically glaring at him, the sourness of his expression coming closer and closer to genuine anger by the moment. “Getting towards ten years now, a whole fucking decade, that I’ve been doing that and only that. Genuinely not sure why you’re so surprised by it, maestro.”

“Shaw, I-” He hesitated for a long moment, his tongue still tied both by Shaw’s sacrifice and the way he was looking at him now. It struck him, yet again, that he had grown used to Shaw looking at him with nothing less than friendly respect. “I’m so sorry. I can appreciate how hard this must be for you, and rest assured that I will do everything within my power to make this easier. You can stay with us if you want, just until you get back up on your feet. Say the word, and I’ll take you right there now. Just give me and Rose an hour or so to get things ready, to set it all up properly for you-”

“So I don’t see a single fucking thing that I’m not supposed to, you mean?” Shaw had eased a little throughout that speech, but at that finish - that unfortunate finish, he immediately corrected inside his head - he went as unyielding as a block of ice again. “You _genuinely_ think that I don’t know exactly what you’re getting up to in that big house of yours, Ben?”

“Shaw,” he said breathlessly, startled yet again. He glanced around hastily to check that nobody had heard, even though the street was largely empty at this time of day where it was too hot for anybody sensible to be out. “I know you’re upset, but-”

“Of course I am fucking _upset_ , Ben!” Shaw yelled, and in any other situation the most startling thing about those words would be Shaw using his actual first name twice in the space of less than a minute. “I have dedicated my entire fucking life, every single fucking moment of the past fifteen _years_ , to this fucking job. I have lost friends, lovers and my entire fucking family over justice and justice alone. It was the only fucking thing I had, the only fucking thing of value that I’ve ever managed to do, and now I don’t even have it anymore! And for what? For _what_. I’ve sacrificed the one important fucking thing about myself for you, one more time, and you can’t even trust me after that. I’ve ruined my entire life for a man who doesn’t see how loyal I am to him, how much I care for him, or _any_ of the shit I’ve put up with for his sake and his sake alone!”

He was stunned, even more so than before. Perhaps he had known how much Shaw had cared for him, in fits and starts, but he had never been forced to outright face it before. “Shaw-”

“I’ve given up everything for absolutely nothing,” Shaw said rawly, talking more to himself now than to anybody else. There was a hollow expression on his face, and what he was startled to realize were the beginnings of sharp tears standing out in his eyes. “I’ve been telling girls, and a few boys, not to do anything that stupid for years now and yet god forbid I ever listen to my own advice.”

“ _Shaw_.”

“Nothing,” Shaw repeated, and if corpses could talk that was what their voices would sound like. The man looked on the point of collapse after everything, about five seconds away from just sinking to his knees and abandoning himself to the muck of the streets. “What am I supposed to do, now that I have nothing? What cause am I supposed to die for now?”

It was too much, he couldn’t allow a man that he cared for to flay himself any more than he already had. A long time ago, almost in another lifetime now, Shaw had unexpectedly crossed the barriers between them to provide comfort in one of the worst moments of his life. The very least he could do, despite his fear and all the many arguments against it, was to return the favour now that their positions were swapped. He stepped forwards, didn’t give Shaw a chance to resist before he wrapped his arms around his bony form and dragged him into a hug.

Shaw resisted for a few moments, as stubborn and wild as that injured wolf he’d earlier compared him to, but then gave in all at once. He practically melted into his embrace, wrapped his bony arms tight around his back and buried his head in the neck of his shirt with a noise that almost sounded like a sob.

“You’re not supposed to die for anything, Shaw, you’re supposed to _live_. For yourself, most of all, but for me if you can’t find it in yourself to do that quite yet,” he said fiercely, only narrowly resisting the urge to turn his head and press a fierce kiss against Shaw’s forehead. “Your job was never the most important thing about you, if anything you were the most important thing about your job. You are one of the most, one of the _only_ , important people to me in this world and I would trust you with my life if not considerably more than that. I am so, so sorry that I’ve never allowed myself to tell you that until now and while I know you may never be able to forgive me I would be pleased beyond words if you tried.”

“To be fair, ma- Ben, I’m not entirely sure that I would’ve actually allowed you to say such things before now,” Shaw said into the neck of his shirt, his voice still so terribly raw, and slowly lifted his head. They both politely and immediately ignored how red and puffy his eyes had become. “I’m sorry too, for the record. It’s not like I can blame you for not trusting anybody, even me, when the world is damn obsessed with punishing you for the slightest bit of vulnerability. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad about it, or anything like that, it’s just-”

“It’s hard to be completely rational, when you’ve just lost everything,” he said, the voice of experience, and hesitated for a long moment before reaching to cup Shaw’s jaw in his hands. “I know. But, for the record, I meant absolutely everything that I said. You’re still yourself, and not even the loss of everything can change that.”

Shaw made a face, but leant almost automatically into his new and intimate touch. “Can’t it?”

“You didn’t believe in justice just because you were a policeman,” he reminded Shaw softly, and kept holding onto his face with a certain sense of giddiness. To get to touch the man, after so long spent pretending that he didn’t want to, was a thrill that he’d never expected. “You believed in justice because you were _you_. And nothing in the world can take that away from you, no matter how hard you try.”

Shaw stared at him for a long moment… And then very slowly started to smile. It wasn’t exactly the most positive expression in the world, he wasn’t expecting anything of the sort, but it was a start. “You may just have a point there, maestro. Doesn’t exactly give me an idea of what to do next, but it is certainly impressively pointy.”

“Come home with me,” he urged, and finally let go of Shaw’s jaw - because they really were standing in a largely public place after all - in favour of reaching down to far more subtly snag his hand instead. “Come inside immediately, no matter what state the house is in, and sit at our kitchen table. Stay the night, or the week, or the month. Figure out what to do next in your own time, as much of it is as afforded us, and know that I’ll have your back no matter what you decide. Allow me to take care of you, for once.”

Shaw stared at him for a long moment more, and then let out a soft sigh… As his fingers tightened, just slightly but so very wonderfully, around his own. “You’d really trust me that much?”

“Why not?” He asked, and although there was still a slight flutter of uncertainty in his gut he felt a lot more confident about the decision than he had about many other things in quite some time. “You’ve always trusted me with everything, after all. Forgive me for saying, but I think that it’s about time I returned the favour.”

Shaw’s smile was still a little wan, but it improved by the moment. When he tugged gently at his hand, to lead him back home where he belonged, he didn’t resist for even a moment before allowing himself to be led towards the future.


End file.
